1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to distributed medium access in wireless peer-to-peer networks.
2. Background
In a synchronous wireless peer-to-peer network, wireless links may participate in a scheduling phase prior to each data traffic phase in a slot to determine whether they may obtain access to the resource medium to transmit in the data traffic phase. The wireless links may each have a different priority, which may be random in each slot. The wireless devices in a wireless link that need resources in the data traffic phase, transmit medium access requests and their priorities in the scheduling phase. When a link receives a medium access request from another higher priority link which can interfere with its own transmission or a transmission from the link could interfere with a transmission of the higher priority link, the link backs off from accessing the resources in the data traffic phase.
The above described protocol avoids collisions, but may be inefficient due to the cascade yielding problem in which a first device yields (i.e., backs off) to a second device, which itself yields to a third device, leaving only the third device to transmit in the data traffic phase when the first device and the third device may have been able to transmit in the data traffic phase concurrently without interference. As such, there is a need to improve the protocol in the scheduling phase such that the cascade yielding problem is reduced.